The pair – played by Jude Law and Johnny Depp – both appeared in 2018’s Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald but the film only alluded to their relationship, leaving fans wanting more.

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“Their relationship was incredibly intense,” Rowling explains in a featurette on the Blu-ray release of the film, as reported by Digital Spy.

“It was passionate, and it was a love relationship.

“But as happens in any relationship, gay or straight or whatever label we want to put on it, one never knows really what the other person is feeling.

“You can’t know, you can believe you know.

“So I’m less interested in the sexual side – though I believe there is a sexual dimension to this relationship – than I am in the sense of the emotions they felt for each other, which ultimately is the most fascinating thing about all human relationships.”

Director David Yates responded by confirming the relationship between the two characters will be central to later instalments of the planned five-film franchise.

He told Empire last October, “The story [of The Crimes of Grindelwald] is about other things, fundamentally, but the story of Grindelwald and Dumbledore. Going forward, that is the story.

“I think people just have to wait and see and appreciate that in movies to come that relationship will be explored much more fully.

“Dumbledore is not out [to the other characters] as a gay man in this film.”

Jude Law also confirmed that there was “more to come” in future films in the series.

JK Rowling made headlines in 2007 when she first revealed that Dumbledore was gay, at a public event after the release of the final Harry Potter book.